Stats for the day:
· 15,967 steps (on pedometer)
· Virgin River Stream Flow Rate Peak: 146 cubic feet per second
· National Parks visited today: 2
· Dollars paid for a simple Subway sandwich: $11 (Talk about supply and demand.)
My brother, Brian, is joining us tonight. The goal is to hike The Narrows in Zion while he’s here. Because The Narrows is not yet open, I did some rearranging of the schedule, and Matt and I headed to Bryce Canyon National Park today. That leaves another day later in the week for The Narrows (please, please, please). Bryce is a relatively quick trip from Zion and to get there you drive through a spectacular mile-long tunnel on the Zion-Mt. Carmel Highway that was completed in 1930.
While we were in the Zion Gift Shop yesterday, Matt found a t-shirt that outlines the 5 premier hikes on the Colorado Plateau. They are: Rim Trail in the Grand Canyon (check), Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde (check), Delicate Arch in Arches (on the agenda), Angels Landing in Zion, and Navajo Trail in Bryce Canyon. Since two were already complete and one was coming, Matt decided that we needed to make it a point to do the other two. Therefore, Bryce Canyon included hiking the Navajo Trail, taking the longer trail to also do the Queen’s Garden Trail. The Navajo Trail includes a section called “Wall Street” where the walls narrow significantly. It’s also a pretty steep trail of switchbacks at this point. BUT, we wouldn’t have to hike out this same way, which after the Grand Canyon was going to be a nice break. Coming out of “Wall Street” you hike through what is about as close to a forest as you are going to get in the desert climate, and then come the “hoodoos.” Bryce is famous for its “hoodoos,” the tall, skinny, pillar-like structures that have strange bumps and spheres making up the pillars. It’s so drastically different from Zion that it’s hard to believe they are so close geographically.
On the way back to Zion, we stopped at the Thunderbird Lounge, home of the “Ho-Made Pies.” Their words, not mine. And interesting given that we’re in what’s pretty typically ultra-conservative Utah. But, we picked up a pie to bring back to camp and welcome Brian.
We also stopped once we were back in Zion to hike the Canyon Overlook Trail. This short, but moderate, hike gives you a breathtaking view of the expanse of Zion. I spent quite a few photos trying to capture the colors in one particular arch-shaped section (without the hole actually making it an arch) of the wall – greens and purples and reds and browns. On the hike back down, there was a cool (literally) little alcove, and I made use of the timer on my camera to catch a shot of Matt and myself. (Okay, grammar people, is myself the right choice there?) The funny part about this is that I’ve not been the most graceful of climbers on this trip, and to make it into the shot, I was going to have to be a mountain goat on the boulders. Of course I made it, and as soon as we’d taken the picture, someone came along who could’ve snapped it for us. But what fun would that have been?
Brian made it to camp tonight (after much confusion about time zones just like us), and it’s early to bed tonight because we’re hiking Angels Landing tomorrow!
Math thoughts for today:
· The Zion-Mt. Carmel Tunnel is an engineering accomplishment. Using the dimensions of the tunnel, I think my students could handle how much rock had to be removed. And if I were daring, I’m sure we could probably figure out what kind of blasting power (and how much) was needed.
· Matt was treated to a whole herd (?) of desert bighorn sheep on the way to Bryce Canyon this morning. They weren’t shy at all, or in any hurry to move off of the road, and we were able to get pretty close for pictures. Their horns have a nice spiral shape relating to the Golden Ratio.
· Zion has a section of wall that is called Checkerboard Mesa. The name comes from the horizontal and rarer vertical lines that cover the wall. The lines can be intersecting lines, and maybe even some transversals to get in angle properties.
· The hoodoos are shapes that are hard to describe, though many are made up of figures that we know. These would be a good challenge from my students to practice finding volume, especially of irregular figures. If they have to split up one object into the prisms and spheres that they know, and then find the total, that’s a good day of multi-step problem solving.
Shout-outs:
· All of the colors in the rocks come from chemical compounds, and most of the red comes from iron oxide, or rust. All of the chemistry talk makes me think of my Uncle Paul and his daughter, Maureen. They are both chemists (and Maureen is a fellow Rockhurst University alum), and sometimes I wish I’d taken Chemistry a little more seriously in high school (sorry, Mr. Lynch) because it’s pretty cool how much it explains and governs in our lives that we don’t even realize.
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